One of my requirements before taking on the homeschooling journey was to find a group that meets once a week to keep me on track. I found Classical Conversations or I should say God put me in the middle of Classical Conversation so that I could fall in love. That is another story. This is about a conversation that myself and two other mom's in our group had after co-op this week.
At the end of our day we ended up at the playground with two other moms and their kids from our class. One mom was doing an informal survey to know if we would return to the group next year or not. I will and hope to become a tutor. This surveying friend is undecided, and the 3rd mom was most likely but not 100% sold.
The conversation at this point turned to what CC was doing for us at this time. Is it worth the money (which by some standards is high and others low, depends on your perspective). I think it's great, and completely worth every penny. My daughter doesn't get it all, we don't have all the memory work done and although she says she wants to be a memory master I am unsure I want to push too hard for it. What I know is that this foundation that is being laid this year is practice for us. We will get this cycle 2 more times. The other 2 cycles we will only get twice. This year is practice for how to do the memory work and how to get schooling done in a week. Are we perfect NO WAY!! Do I try and learn from every experience so that we can tailor our next one to work out better, absolutely. I am as much a student in this process as is my daughter. I love to learn and CC challenges me and my daughter to go beyond what I already know.
Mom #2 who is pretty sure, but not 100% (and also had the youngest of the 3 kids in CC). Does very little at home with the memory work except play the CD's. She likes that he knows more than she thinks he does, which he proves with the review work each week, but she isn't formally pushing any school at this point with her son. He's young and a boy that's enough he may actually get three chances at this cycle and the next one depending on what choices they make the next 6-7 years.
Mom #3 who did the survey is completely undecided. She is not only undecided about CC, but about homeschooling her son in general. She likes the Christian Education and cost that homeschooling provides, but she and her son are both strong willed. That combination means that they argue allot. He has to be pushed to do anything. He has started reading over the Christmas break, which was a major struggle. He is learning, and like my daughter public school thinks he needs to wait til next year to start Kindergarten. We both encouraged her to keep going, I gave what pointers I could. We chatted and discussed the possibilities. I would be sad to see her go, she is a good mom with a great kid.
This discussion is why I chose to co-op. Homeschooling can be lonely, but when the 3 of us got together we learned that we all have the same types of struggles. Some are more exaggerated than others in different areas, but they are essentially all the same. So getting together and talking about it was wonderful. We encouraged, lamented, and generally just felt good to share with others in our same situation. All of our kids in this youngest group of CC are the 1st child so we didn't get the vertran's opinion, but at this time that wasn't what we needed or wanted, we needed like moms with like situations to validate our own. Thanks friends for sharing I had a great time!
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